NEWS & ANALYSIS

South Africa's white Coloureds

The controversy around the statement about the number of "Coloureds" in the Western Cape and recent articles about this group of people promp one to ask for a definition of a "Coloured" person.

In a previous article I claimed that the Black Economic Empowerment Act provides no definition for "Coloureds". It merely states that Blacks are "Africans, Coloureds and Indians". I contended that anyone claiming to have the genes of an indigenous African or of any non-European, can, in terms of the Act, claim to be Black.

I went on to say that Eva, the Khoi (or "Hottentot") girl,who grew up in Jan van Riebeeck's house, was not the only non-European woman to marry a European in South Africa. In H.F. Heese's book, Groep Sonder Grense, the particulars of more than a thousand marriages between Europeans and non-European people in the period 1652 to 1795 in the Cape are recorded.

Nobody has ever sat down to work out how many Afrikaners have non-European genes which would enable them to claim to be Blacks, but I have now made a list of the surnames and numbers of people who married descendants of just one of Eva's great-grandchildren. I have included in this list only those surnames of which seven or more people married persons with Eva's genes.

To get an idea of how many Afrikaners this list represents, I can mention that one of the 106 Swanepoels on the list was my great-grandfather. His descendants alone run into the hundreds.

Genealogists will tell you that Afrikaners are practically all related to each other. Technically, therefore, all Afrikaners can claim to be black. Dividing South Africans on racial grounds, however, is not only morally reprehensible, it is also legally unsound and people with the means to do so should test its validity in Court.

SURNAMES AND NUMBERS OF SOME OF THE PERSONS WHO MARRIED PELSER DESCENDANTS OF EVA, THE KHOI GIRL